Saturday, April 9, 2011

ACRL Part 1

cherry tree, blooming on campus

I'm still organizing my thoughts and notes from ACRL, and I'll try to have a summary here next week.

In the meantime I wanted to comment that I was glad to participate in a conference where attendees shared such a deep sense of mission and relevance. One of the things I worry about constantly at the community college is whether the library is still relevant to campus (and off-campus, in the case of students taking online classes) life, but there was no question of this at ACRL. Participants and presenters all displayed a vibrancy and engagement that was refreshing. It's true there was the usual talk of the changing needs of our patrons, but academic libraries seem to be working to meet those needs, figuring out how to best support them, rather than blandly accepting marginalization and obsolescence. This was consistent across a range of topics, from access to collections and information literacy to supporting traditional and non-traditional scholarship. I was glad to be in there.